Photo by Martin Argyroglo (Production Frac Champagne-Ardenne)
The conference will feature talks by Luchezar Boyadjiev, Jana Písaříková, and Catherine Spencer, and performances by Božidar Jurjević and Branko Milisković. Speaker and performer biographies:
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“How Many Nails in a Mouth? Self-portrait with 2 kg of 12.5 cm long nails,” 1995
(Photo credit: Fuji Photo Lab off Vitosha Blvd. in Sofia, no longer in existence)
Luchezar Boyadjiev is an artist based in Sofia, Bulgaria. His work is about private interpretations of public space and visuality of global cities; about the public vs. private in the artist’s inner world; and about fostering involvement with audiences through breaking up the local/global, the active/pasive participant, and the artist/audience devides. His media is installation, photography, drawing, objects, text, video, and lectures. Recent exhibitions: “Stand Out! …& Standstill!”, One Night Stand Gallery, Sofia (solo); “Commercial Show with a Non-Profit Goal”, 0gms–drawer Gallery, Sofia (solo); “Not a Library Artist either”, SALT Galata, Istanbul (2013, solo); “Artist in the Storage”, City Art Gallery, Sofia (2010, solo); “Mature and Angry”, Ancient Bath – CCA, Plovdiv, Bulgaria; “The Grammar of Freedom: Five Lessons”, GARAGE MCA, Moscow and “Art for Change 1985-2015”, Sofia City Gallery, Sofia (2015); “Disconsent”, Ancient Bath – CCA, Plovdiv, Bulgaria (2014); “Economics in Art”, MOCAK, Cracow (2013); “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”, 1st Biennial, Kiev and “The Eye Never Sees itself”, 2nd Biennial, Yekaterinburg (2012); “The Global Contemporary”, ZKM, Karlsruhe (2011).
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Božidar Jurjević is a Croatian visual and performance artist. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, Graphic Department, in 1988. He had his first solo performance in 1990, in Dubrovnik, and has created numerous performances since. Much of his work is focused on struggle, and his performances are often physically gruelling. The artist also endeavours to make work that is topically relevant. While in the 1990s, he created powerful performance based on the siege of his city during the war in Croatia, in more recent years his focus has turned to the world economic crisis. Although only hinted at in his performances, the ultimate result of struggle is inevitably death.
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Branko Milisković [Бранко Милисковић] was born in 1982 in Belgrade/Serbia. Born in Former Yugoslavia he was the last generation of Marshall Tito’s Pioneers. In 1989 Yugoslavia broke up and he has started his primary school passing through the period of isolation, embargo, inflation and devastation of his country. After having completed the secondary school for Architecture, Milisković studied Polytechnic High School (Industrial Design) and Faculty of Fine Arts, class of Mrđan Bajić, department of Sculpture in Belgrade/Serbia. In 2007 he has received the Dutch scholarship HSP Huygens and continued his Bachelor at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague/The Netherlands and obtained his degree in 2009. Milisković has earned his Master degree from Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, class of Jeanne Faust (2012). His work have been shown internationally such as at Reims Scenes d’Europe 2015 at La Comedie de Reims, Galerie Metropolis, Paris 2014, CSW/CoCA, Torun, G12 HUB, Belgrade, solo productions at Kampnagel, Hamburg, Les Halles, Brussels 2011-2014, Zeitraumexit, Mannheim 2013 etc. Branko Milisković currently lives and works between Germany, France and Serbia and was also performing and exhibiting in Venice, Turin, Alba (Italy), Hamburg, Berlin, Gießen, Baden-Baden (Germany), Brussels (Belgium), Paris, Marseille, Reims (France), Krems (Austria), Belgrade (Serbia), Tel Aviv (Israel), Moscow (Russia), Piotrkow Trybunalski, Torun, Lublin (Poland), Turku, Helsinki (Finland), Trondheim (Norway), The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Haarlem, Arnhem, Den Bosch (The Netherlands) New York, Chicago (USA). [Source: official website of Branko Milisković]
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Jana Písaříková (born in 1984), a curator and art theorist, author of short novellas and poems. Since 2014 she has co-operated with the Moravian Gallery in Brno in preparing a new permanent exhibition “Art is Here: New Art After 1945,” and in processing the archive of Jiří Valoch. She has been enrolled in the doctoral studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of VUT in Brno. In her research, she has been focusing on archiving, historical reflection and methods of presentation of ephemeral art in galleries. Since 2009, she has been devoted to her curatorial activities: Cupboard of Matthew Barney, Bratislava City Gallery, 2009 (jointly with Tomáš Hodboď); Alotrium, Gallery of the Good Shepherd, 2013 (jointly with Tomáš Hodboď); Jiří Valoch: Words, Fait gallery preview; Jiří Valoch: Merde, Tranzit Prague, 2015 (jointly with Ondřej Chrobák). In 2014, she worked as an Associate researcher at Rewind Archive, Duncan Jordanstone College of Art and Design, under the guidance of prof. Stephen Partridge.
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Catherine Spencer is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of St Andrews. She received her PhD from the University of York and is currently working on a book project entitled Fieldwork: Performance Art, Social Science and Politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Her research has been supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Carnegie Trust, the AHRC and a Getty Library Research Grant; in 2013 she was a Terra Summer Residency pre-doctoral fellow.
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Błażej Marczak (b.1983) is a photographer based in Aberdeen, Scotland, who graduated from the University of Abertay in 2012. His practice focuses on portraiture as well as social landscapes, mainly within the urban environment. About his work, he writes “I am curious about people’s stories, history and about specific conditions we are living in. I adopt a simple visual language to express complex circumstances.” Marczak has been commissioned as the official photographer of Performance Art East, Northeast, West, to document the performances and create collaborative portraits with the performers. Check out his work on his website: http://bmarczak.com and follow him on Twitter @MarczakB and Facebook .
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